The present invention relates to a wall cabinet for storage of articles therein and, more particularly, to a vacuum formed, heat fusible sheet material cabinet structure having a unitary body portion and a sealed, hollow door pivotally secured to the body portion.
There exists a large variety of wall cabinets for selection by consumers to serve numerous purposes, such as medicine cabinets, vanities and storage. These wall cabinets mount either on or in a wall of a building and may be constructed of wood, metal or plastic. A consumer, upon considering acquisition of such a wall cabinet, is primarily concerned with looks, weight, structural integrity and price of the unit. It is well known that in recent years plastic materials have been used in construction of an increasing number of articles for consumer use, including wall cabinets. The increasing use of plastics, more particularly polymeric compositions, is a result of the increase in cost of raw materials, such as steel and wood, and the costs of machinery and labor involved in manufacturing articles from the heretofore more conventional materials. The use of plastics results in reducing the weight of a cabinet and thus facilitates handling and installing thereof. At the same time, however, structural integrity is a problem with plastic materials, and previous plastic cabinet constructions and the manufacturing costs in connection with molds and dies for forming cabinet parts and assembly procedures for the parts have not enabled providing a low cost plastic cabinet without sacrificing aesthetics and/or structural integrity.
More particularly with regard to previous efforts to produce plastic wall cabinets, one-piece cabinet bodies such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,314,741 to Litner have been produced by deep drawing plastic sheet material or injection molding. While a light weight cabinet body can be produced in this manner, the cost of die components for injection molding or deep drawing are extremely expensive, and it is difficult to mold or die shape plastic sheet material free of surface defects which detract from the appearance of the end product. Moreover, the provision of such a cabinet body with a door or closure requires the use of hinge components suitably secured to the door and cabinet body, thus increasing the component parts to be assembled to complete the cabinet and the time required to complete the assembly, all of which further increase the cost of the cabinet unit. While the provision of hinge components integral with injection molded cabinet body and door components, such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,298,764 to Goldfarb, may reduce the assembly time insofar as the cabinet body and door are concerned, such integral hinge structures will further increase the cost of the molds for the body and door components and will require the reasonably accurate boring of the aligned pin openings in the hinge components following the molding operation, thus offsetting the savings and assembly time.
With further regard to previous plastic wall cabinet constructions, the door or closure components thereof have not been constructed so as to promote all of the desired characteristics mentioned above, namely an attractive appearance, low manufacturing and assembly costs, light weight construction and structural integrity. In this respect, for example, the provision of a door frame and mirror assembly such as shown in the patent to Goldfarb is expensive and produces a heavy door component which imposes considerable stress on the plastic material of the cabinet body, hinges and door frame during opening and closing of the door. Accordingly, a relatively heavy plastic construction for the walls of the cabinet body and the hinge components is required to minimize the potential breakage or distortion of the plastic material as a result of the imposition of such forces. Such a heavy construction of course increases the cost of the end product without achieving the desired light weight construction. A planar cabinet door, such as that suggested by the disclosure of the patent to Litner, could be light weight if made of plastic. However, such a planar door would more than likely lack structural integrity as a result of flexibility thereof and would provide a less than desirable attractiveness.
The best combination of aesthetics, lightness of weight and structural integrity for a cabinet door would be provided by a hollow door construction comprised of front and back walls, one or both of which would be contoured for purposes of aesthetics and structural integrity, and which walls would be suitably interconnected with one another about the periphery of the door. A number of different methods could be employed to construct such a hollow door. In this respect, for example, two plastic sheets could be preformed by molding or die shaping to provide pan-shaped components having telescopically interengaging flanges which would be suitably bonded to one another. Production of a door in this manner would be extremely expensive in light of the cost of molds or dies for forming the wall components and/or the time and effort required to form and then secure the components together. Additionally, as pointed out hereinabove, injection molding and die shaping can produce defects in the surface of the plastic material. It is also well known to produce hollow plastic objects by introducing plastic sheets between contoured molds and blowing or drawing the sheets into contact therewith while peripherally bonding the sheets laterally adjacent the juncture of the mold cavities. While the molds and equipment for such vacuum or blow shaping is less expensive than injection molding or die shaping equipment, whereby production by vacuum or blow molding would be more economical, the latter methods produce a laterally extending seam in the area of juncture between the plastic sheets. Such a laterally projecting seam would be visible about the periphery of a cabinet door produced in this manner, and the time and effort required to finish the seam after forming the sheets in order to produce an acceptable appearance in the seam area would offset the savings achieved by producing the hollow door in this manner. Furthermore, efforts to minimize the unattractive appearance of the seam such as by removing the laterally projecting portions of the plastic sheets cannot, with reasonable efforts, mask the existence of the seam and, more importantly, result in weakening the bonded juncture between the sheets and thus the structural integrity of the hollow panel. It will be appreciated in connection with a light weight plastic cabinet door which is repeatedly opened and closed that flexure of the plastic material would promote separation of the sheets in the seam area therebetween.